At the conclusion the goddess
Dulness yawns, and a blight falls upon art, science, and philosophy. I
quote the lines, which Pope himself could not repeat without emotion,
and which have received the highest eulogies from Johnson and Thackeray.

In vain, in vain--the all-composing Hour
Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power--
She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of night primeval and of chaos old!
Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand oppress'd
Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! They gaze, turn giddy, rave and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall
And universal darkness buries all.

The most conspicuous figure in this new Dunciad (published March, 1742),
is Bentley--taken as the representative of a pedant rampant. Bentley is,
I think, the only man of real genius of whom Pope has spoken in terms
implying gross misappreciation. With all his faults, Pope was a really
fine judge of literature, and has made fewer blunders than such men as
Addison, Gray, and Johnson, infinitely superior to him in generosity of
feeling towards the living. He could even appreciate Bentley, and had
written, in his copy of Bentley's Milton, "_Pulchre, bene, recte_,"
against some of the happier emendations in the great critic's most
unsuccessful performance. The assault in the Dunciad is not the less
unsparing and ignorantly contemptuous of scholarship. The explanation is
easy. Bentley, who had spoken contemptuou